How long is a piece of string. (Folly Tearoom, Holt.)

Folly Tearoom,

Holt,

Opening times Mon-Sat 09:00-17:00,

Highly Recommended 

Despite the excitement and social media frenzy surrounding my cheese scone of the year news (see cheese scone news) I thought it was important to continue with business as usual and undertake my 82nd cafe visit for the year to date. 

I had arranged to meet Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) at his house and foolishly agreed that we could go on one of his 'dynamic' rides rather than one of my meticulously planned ones. For regular readers you will know this could only mean one thing, that we were going to Holt.

The weather forecast had predicted that today would be the last 'warm' day before the big freeze hits us tomorrow but there had also been a lot of rain so conditions weren't ideal for a ride, we therefore agreed to limit the ride to 30 miles.

I asked Andrew how he would know that this was going to be a 30 mile ride. He said he had no modern GPS based tools like me and would use the old school method of a map and a piece of string. I had never heard of this method but I assumed he was going to tie one end of a 30 mile piece of string to his bike and the other end to our start point and then when the string becomes taught we would have done 30 miles. However it seemed a bit dangerous to me and I wasn't sure where you would get a 30 mile piece of string from. I told him not to bother with the string and that I would keep him informed of miles completed on my GPS so that he could adjust the route accordingly.

I was glad to have chosen to go on my winter bike, with it's disc brakes, as it was rather slippery and there were a few manic drivers speeding along what should have been quite country lanes. However despite nearly ending up in the hedge on a couple of occasions we arrived in Holt safely with 20 of our target 30 miles completed.

Fortunately Holt has the largest number of tearooms per capita of anywhere in the world so there were still plenty of new venues to try. Today we selected the Folly Tearooms and gardens. 

Outside The Folly Tearoom

We parked our bikes in the very pleasant outdoor garden seating area which I imagine would be exceptionally pleasant to sit in on a lovely summer's day. Sadly today was a drizzly late autumn day so we headed inside

Bikes in lovely outdoor garden seating area

Once inside I was surrounded by cake which was on the counter, in a glass tower and tucked away on shelves. I obviously awarded a very high rating effective cake selection rating.

Part of the impressive cake selection

It was waitress service so we picked a table and waited to be served. The tables were neatly laid out with china plates, napkins (in holders) and best of all a cake fork. There was also a lot of china on display with cups and plates adorning the walls. This was clearly a proper tearoom. Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) thought it was all 'a bit too Holt' for him which I found rather rich seeing of his insistence to come to Holt on every opportunity.

Table layout including cake fork

I ordered hot chocolate, a cheese scone (as part of my on going cheese scone serving temperature research #cheesesconehot) and chocolate cake. Andrew ordered a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich, he said he would order a cake later. I knew that he would not and he didn't. 

Our food and drinks arrived and it was clear the Folly tearoom was china mad as unusually my hot chocolate came in a cup and saucer, the scones on a china plate with butter on its own china dish and best of all Andrew's crisps for his sandwich in a china pot.

Crisps served in china pot

The quality of the food and drinks was very good, and I was particularly pleased that the excellent cheese scones were served hot, so high drinks and cake quality scores all round. 

Food and drink had much china involved

The Folly tearooms and garden was the most tearoomy tearoom I have been to although we felt a little out of place in our cycle gear as everyone else had come in their tea room garb. I would highly recommend it especially after a cycle ride on a hot summers day when you can make use of the garden and not scare the other non cycling punters who seemed to find Lycra a bit frightening. 

With 20 of our 30 miles used up Andrew was under pressure to design a route of just 10 miles for the return to Alysham. I was relieved we had not used Andrew's original route measuring approach as we ended up doing 32 miles and would have therefore run out of string before we got back. Welcome to the 21st century.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
7.5	7.0	9.0	7.5	7.0	7.60

Route

Click here to download 32 Mile Alysham Holt loop GPX file for your GPS